Topic: Time bugs

My Chumby cannot keep time. If I set the time manually or use the net, the time is always off. I am trying to use this for a clock but if I have to adjust the time on a daily basis it is no use to me. What can I do.

Jon

Re: Time bugs

jonemmet,
How much time per hour is it losing?
Have you tried a factory restore or reloading the firmware?

Re: Time bugs

It's slow by a few min an hr. How do you do a factory restore and or reload firmware.

Re: Time bugs

jonemmet wrote:

It's slow by a few min an hr. How do you do a factory restore and or reload firmware.

Reset....
1. Shut your chumby off.
2. Press and hold your finger on the touch screen and turn your chumby back on.
3. A message will appear that says "Continue to PRESS this screen to load Special Options, or RELEASE for normal startup".
4. Once you are in Special Options you can remove your finger from the touch screen.
5. Select to option to restore to defaults
6. Test for time loss

Firmware reload....
Instructions and download is at http://www.chumby.com/pages/latest_software
Please read carefully.


Please contact support at http://www.chumby.com/pages/help_support  if neither of these work.

Thanks,
Matt

Re: Time bugs

Mine tends to run slow as well, though it's only a few minutes in a day.  How often does the chumby query the time server (and is there a way to change it)?

Re: Time bugs

pjsauter wrote:

Mine tends to run slow as well, though it's only a few minutes in a day.  How often does the chumby query the time server (and is there a way to change it)?

Every 3 hours... no it's a set period.

Re: Time bugs

Hello,
i have the same problem. Every day the clock looses 6 minutes. I use the Paris TimeZone and the Beta Control Panel. I do not understand, il the time is synchronised every 3 hours, why this hapends ?
If anybody as an idea.

Re: Time bugs

Can anyone having issues with this please try the solution posted on http://forum.chumby.com/viewtopic.php?pid=12299#12299

Thanks, Matt

Re: Time bugs

I am am noob when it comes to computers, is there going to be a fix for this as a patch or something executable? This thing is kind of useless to me with a wonkey clock.

Re: Time bugs

Hopefully this gets fixed. I'm having the problem too and I'm using the Chumby as an alarm clock... a clock needs to be able to know what time it is!

Re: Time bugs

We have yet to actually see one of these "slow" devices in house, so we don't know what you folks are seeing, and therefore don't know if/how to fix it.

We had one user that had been complaining about significant lost time, so we swapped it out under warranty - I've had it running on my desk solidly for a week now and it's running perfectly on time.

I'm not saying it's not happening - we just can't see to reproduce this problem.

How are you detecting lost time?  Are you running single widgets, or a mix?  If you reset your chumby, does the time correct itself and then start losing time again? Does it ever run fast instead of slow?

Re: Time bugs

Here's something that would help us diagnose this - someone that has a "slow" chumby, please run this script from an SSH session:

while [ 1 ] ; do rdate -p time.chumby.com; date; sleep 10; done

This will print out the chumby's time and network time every 10 seconds.  Let us know if they drift apart by more than a couple of seconds.

Re: Time bugs

Duane wrote:

Here's something that would help us diagnose this - someone that has a "slow" chumby, please run this script from an SSH session:

while [ 1 ] ; do rdate -p time.chumby.com; date; sleep 10; done

This will print out the chumby's time and network time every 10 seconds.  Let us know if they drift apart by more than a couple of seconds.

I'll give this a try when I get home tonight. Yesterday it appears that I'd lost about 10 minutes in 16 hours of run time.

Re: Time bugs

Duane wrote:

Here's something that would help us diagnose this - someone that has a "slow" chumby, please run this script from an SSH session:
...
This will print out the chumby's time and network time every 10 seconds.  Let us know if they drift apart by more than a couple of seconds.

Just got home, my Chumby read 6:19 when it was 6:29.

SSH'd in and got the following output:

chumby:~# while [ 1 ] ; do rdate -p time.chumby.com; date; sleep 10; done
Tue Apr 29 18:33:40 2008
Tue Apr 29 18:23:37 PDT 2008
Tue Apr 29 18:33:50 2008
Tue Apr 29 18:23:47 PDT 2008
Tue Apr 29 18:34:01 2008
Tue Apr 29 18:23:57 PDT 2008
Tue Apr 29 18:34:11 2008
Tue Apr 29 18:24:07 PDT 2008
Tue Apr 29 18:34:21 2008
Tue Apr 29 18:24:17 PDT 2008

chumby:~#

I have a feeling you probably wanted me to resynch the unit first, but at least this'll show that I'm not crazy.

Resynching now, will post back later when I see some drift. Assuming that the drift is constant, that should be within an hour.

Re: Time bugs

Ok, got your data already.

I resynched my Chumby by disabling then reenabling network time. This fixed the time.

After that, I went back to the SSH session and ran a version of your script with 60 second updates.

It appears we're losing 1 second about every minute!

Here's the data:

chumby:~# while [ 1 ] ; do rdate -p time.chumby.com; date; sleep 60; done
Tue Apr 29 18:42:11 2008
Tue Apr 29 18:42:09 PDT 2008
Tue Apr 29 18:43:12 2008
Tue Apr 29 18:43:09 PDT 2008
Tue Apr 29 18:44:12 2008
Tue Apr 29 18:44:09 PDT 2008
Tue Apr 29 18:45:13 2008
Tue Apr 29 18:45:09 PDT 2008
Tue Apr 29 18:46:14 2008
Tue Apr 29 18:46:09 PDT 2008
Tue Apr 29 18:47:15 2008
Tue Apr 29 18:47:09 PDT 2008
Tue Apr 29 18:48:16 2008
Tue Apr 29 18:48:09 PDT 2008
Tue Apr 29 18:49:17 2008
Tue Apr 29 18:49:10 PDT 2008
Tue Apr 29 18:50:18 2008
Tue Apr 29 18:50:10 PDT 2008
Tue Apr 29 18:51:19 2008
Tue Apr 29 18:51:10 PDT 2008

chumby:~#

Re: Time bugs

OK, thanks - this is *very* helpful.  I'll pass this to Ken and bunnie so they can see what's up.

Re: Time bugs

Thanks, hopefully everything gets figured out! smile

Re: Time bugs

Duane wrote:

OK, thanks - this is *very* helpful.  I'll pass this to Ken and bunnie so they can see what's up.

I saw a post of yours in another thread wheere you mention a rdate cron job that runs every 3 hours.

If that's the case, you'd think my chumby would never be more than 3 minutes behind (since we lose about 1 minute every hour).

Perhaps the time synch is not going off for some reason?

It may also prove useful to know that I keep my Chumby in night mode for most of the day... perhaps there is something inherent to this mode that is preventing the time from synching?

Re: Time bugs

eisenb11 wrote:
Duane wrote:

OK, thanks - this is *very* helpful.  I'll pass this to Ken and bunnie so they can see what's up.

I saw a post of yours in another thread wheere you mention a rdate cron job that runs every 3 hours.

If that's the case, you'd think my chumby would never be more than 3 minutes behind (since we lose about 1 minute every hour).

Perhaps the time synch is not going off for some reason?

It may also prove useful to know that I keep my Chumby in night mode for most of the day... perhaps there is something inherent to this mode that is preventing the time from synching?

I think it actually synchs at 3AM every morning, not every 3 hours.

20 (edited by eisenb11 2008-05-09 23:02:22)

Re: Time bugs

Duane wrote:

OK, thanks - this is *very* helpful.  I'll pass this to Ken and bunnie so they can see what's up.

Hi Duane, just got my replacement Chumby up and running. It seems that this unit is also fast.

It looks like we're still losing about 1 second every minute!

--- data below ---

BusyBox v1.6.1 (2008-03-25 16:42:01 PDT) Built-in shell (ash)
Enter 'help' for a list of built-in commands.

chumby:~# while [ 1 ] ; do rdate -p time.chumby.com; date; sleep 60; done
Fri May  9 23:34:27 2008
Fri May  9 23:34:21 PDT 2008
Fri May  9 23:35:28 2008
Fri May  9 23:35:21 PDT 2008
Fri May  9 23:36:30 2008
Fri May  9 23:36:21 PDT 2008
Fri May  9 23:37:31 2008
Fri May  9 23:37:22 PDT 2008
Fri May  9 23:38:32 2008
Fri May  9 23:38:22 PDT 2008
Fri May  9 23:39:33 2008
Fri May  9 23:39:22 PDT 2008
Fri May  9 23:40:34 2008
Fri May  9 23:40:22 PDT 2008
Fri May  9 23:41:35 2008
Fri May  9 23:41:22 PDT 2008
Fri May  9 23:42:36 2008
Fri May  9 23:42:22 PDT 2008
Fri May  9 23:43:37 2008
Fri May  9 23:43:22 PDT 2008
Fri May  9 23:44:38 2008
Fri May  9 23:44:22 PDT 2008
Fri May  9 23:45:39 2008
Fri May  9 23:45:22 PDT 2008
Fri May  9 23:46:40 2008
Fri May  9 23:46:22 PDT 2008
Fri May  9 23:47:41 2008
Fri May  9 23:47:23 PDT 2008
Fri May  9 23:48:42 2008
Fri May  9 23:48:23 PDT 2008
Fri May  9 23:49:43 2008
Fri May  9 23:49:23 PDT 2008
Fri May  9 23:50:44 2008
Fri May  9 23:50:23 PDT 2008
Fri May  9 23:51:45 2008
Fri May  9 23:51:23 PDT 2008
Fri May  9 23:52:46 2008
Fri May  9 23:52:23 PDT 2008

Re: Time bugs

OK, now that's just weird.

Are you using the same power supply?

Re: Time bugs

Duane wrote:

OK, now that's just weird.

Are you using the same power supply?

Nope, I boxed up everything from the old Chumby - even the packaging!

Re: Time bugs

Wow.  OK, well, we'll see what happens when your old chumby arrives here.  If it doesn't lose time here, then we may have to ask you to run some  additional tests for us.

Re: Time bugs

Not a problem, I'll be happy to help in any way I can.

Dropped the unit off yesterday at a Kinkos. It'll probably only take a day or so to get to you from Redondo Beach.

Re: Time bugs

Duane wrote:

Wow.  OK, well, we'll see what happens when your old chumby arrives here.  If it doesn't lose time here, then we may have to ask you to run some  additional tests for us.

I had a thought for yah... Could there be a hotspot inside the chumby causing a temprature issue throwing off the clock hardware...  or could it be a powerline frequency issue...